SPECIAL REPORT: Is Tesco raising standards and pay in Bangladesh clothing factories?

Labour-intensive: Bangladesh's clothing and textiles industry is the country's most important sector

As the plane makes its final decent into Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport, the usual indicators of prosperity are missing. A dirt track replaces the motorway and the airport car park is populated almost entirely by bicycle rickshaws.

Only the taxi-way, strewn with cargo, gives some testament to Bangladesh trading its way out of poverty.

The labour-intensive clothing and textiles industry forms the most important sector, having accounted for £9.4bn in export value in 2010.

For supermarket giant Tesco, Bangladesh is a key producer, delivering around 20 per cent of its clothing and homewear ranges.

It so important that the grocer opened a training academy on Saturday to educate middle-managers in how to operate textile factories more efficiently.

Such an investment, costing around £300,000, is a drop in the ocean for the world’s most populous country. With 150m people crammed into a space around the size of England the former colony has struggled through famine, military coups and a split from Pakistan in 1971.

For years its economy grew by a tiny 2 per cent but over the past two decades it has managed to deliver increases in gross domestic product of around 5 per cent, reducing the percentage of those below the poverty line from 49 per cent in 2000 to 32 per cent in 2010.

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McKinsey says: ‘Bangladesh offers the two main hard advantages – price and capacity. It provides satisfactory quality levels, especially in value and entry-level mid-market products, while acceptable speed and risk levels can be achieved through careful management.’

The key here being careful management. As in many of the poorest countries in the world, factory standards vary wildly.

Retailers, often far removed geographically from their suppliers, have fallen foul of acceptable standards whether ethical or commercial, despite best intentions and in a few cases in spite of them.

Workers’ conditions and wages are commercial hot potatoes, as is the use of child labour.

F&F, Tesco’s clothing brand, has set up the Bangladesh Apparel Skills Foundation, aimed at raising the level of the ready-made garment sector and improving conditions for workers in factories.

Suppliers send middle-managers on day release to a classroom-based course.

It aims to build leadership skills and teach more sophisticated production techniques that might seem obvious to those in the developed world but are alien to many in less advantaged countries.

Tesco said the centre would be open to all factories, even those used by competing retailers, with the aim of raising standards across the board.

‘The Skills Foundation will support mid-to-lower level factory management to improve productivity, efficiency and organisational behaviour,’ it said. ‘This will lead to more constructive worker-relations, improved working hours and wages, higher productivity and improved quality.

‘In turn this will provide a platform to help support the long-term competitiveness of Bangladesh.’

It all sounds very worthy. But don’t be fooled – this great push to improve standards in Bangladesh is more about profit than any greater-good philanthropy.

Of the three factories hosting trial production lines overseen by managers sent to the foundation, the results are commercially clear.

Productivity is up 43 per cent, absenteeism is down 20 per cent, line-efficiency up 5 per cent with the percentage of defective products down by 30 per cent.

The touchy-feely stuff is a by-product of what is a commercially-motivated initiative. The results can be seen at NAZ, Tesco’s second biggest clothing supplier, situated an hour-and-a-half out of the capital city, Dhaka.

At the end of a dirt track two grand metal gates sweep open to reveal a modern glass and metal structure with a sign that says: ‘No child labour.’

Inside, the production lines that make t-shirts, knitted tops and shorts for Tesco, Next, Zara, Mango and Uniqlo, are run like a military operation.

Around 2,500 seamstresses hunch over myriad sewing machines, individually piecing together each garment in an air-cooled environment with traditional Shreekrishna Kirtana music piped over speakers.

One line making F&F polo shirts is controlled by manager Aziz who attended Tesco’s skills academy. He said: ‘I have attended two days every two weeks and have finetuned what I already knew. We have been taught standard operating procedure methods, and introduced a buddy system where experienced workers help the new guys.’

Some in the developed world might baulk at the £50-a-month average salary. But as Aziz says, it comes regular as clockwork on the sixth day of every month. In a country where little can be relied upon, workers are grateful for small mercies and hope they are on the path to bigger riches.